Unraveled

Unraveled

  A. D. Roland

  A. D. Roland

  © 2013 A. D. Roland

  Digital Edition

  All rights reserved. Except for the use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means is forbidden without the express permission of the author.

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and settings are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, names, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  © 2013 Ashley Roland

       

  ~*~

   

          I'm coming unraveled. Part of me trails through time and space, disintegrating. I try to catch the remnants as they fall away, but they slip through my fingers like the shade I will soon become. The Superior stands behind me, always watching, always there, but always silent. All I want, all I need, is for Him to tell me I'm okay.

  But he won't, because I have to figure it out myself.

  Darien's gone. Part of me is gone, too. What's left leaks out through the holes in my soul, those wispy bits that dissolve into the Nothingness.

  I want the Superior to tell me Darien is still out there, somewhere, somewhere in the vast Knot of time and space, but he won't.  He places a hand on my shoulder, just to remind me of his presence. Cold comfort.

  How long would I feel like this? Phrases like "how long" hadn’t bothered me before. Darien and I, we laughed when somebody asked 'how long?' Now, the phrase tears at my heart. How long do I have to wait until I don’t hurt anymore?

  It’s a cruel trick of fate. Our purpose for existing is also our torturer. We are temporally immortal. We age and slip back into youth and age again, continuously. Look at our faces one moment, you’ll see the glow of youth—most of us are plucked from our times and nations in our mid-twenties—but if you glance away and look back, you may see wrinkles and gray hairs. We’ve all seen our births, we’ve all laughed at survival stories of the near-destructive paradoxes we’ve unintentionally created when our past-or-future selves catch a glimpse of us. Because time doesn’t affect us, we don’t have to eat or sleep.

  We do because it reminds us we were once human, before Time stole us. We are temporal oddities.

  Darien marveled at the tiny human pleasures. Walking barefoot in summer grasses, or on a beach somewhere. Feeling the wind blow his shaggy hair around his head, or laughing when it blew my hair into my face. He loved to laugh. He hung on to his humanity, and showed me how to do the same.

  One in ten million is born with the ability to move through the tangled wad of temporal byways that we call Time. The first Ripper came from sixteenth century Italy. The second from the year 5000. Darien came from the 1990’s, and I came from 2054.

  All timelines exist simultaneously. It’s a huge knot, tangled and twisted and ever-growing. I can stand in one spot, say 1987, and take a step back, and be in 1432. Or take another step back, and I'm in 7986. I can climb timelines like monkeys in treetops, swing across gaps like Tarzan. Lines double back on themselves, tangle up, all guided by every thought and action of every being on the planet, all at once. It’s beyond true description, since human metaphors and similes only encompass what we see and know.

  When Darien disappeared, I tried to keep track of the days. I couldn’t, since we don't move in increments of time. We move from event to event. One moment I was an hour before he was taken from me, and the next, I was two hours after, with the Superior holding me from the slowly-closing rift in time. We constantly move around the knot, tying broken threads, repairing the damage done when Time grows too short, or some unchecked Ripper comes into his or her power. When an anachronism occurs, we deal with it before an anomaly forms and Time rips. The reasons we exist are endless—we don’t know the end of time, but we have unalterable points in time, which much remain so. We defend those points from those with malicious intent, or innocent bad choices. We influence choices, and we go back along the thread to fix the mistakes. Angels, we joke. We are immortal, we serve the Superior, and death cannot touch us, so it can't be too far from the truth.

  There is no time for grieving my loss. If I stop moving, stop following the Superior, stop tying knots...

  I don't know what will happen, and as much as I mourn, I know I can't turn my back on my Superior.

  We travel in ships that are really rooms, places to keep our few belongings and to find respite from the turbulence of time. We can walk the Lines without the ships, in just our human form, but we choose to hold to the human ideas of shelter and home.

  Time doesn’t affect us, so the wounds left by Darien’s taking are raw. Since we exist outside of time, the wounds are unprotected by the natural balm of passing moments, hours, days, years.  

  I could look outside, and see the beautiful meadow and the shores of the quiet pond where Darien and I stood, the capsule in our hands. I could watch my past-self and Darien fight to shove the capsule through the membranous walls of Time itself in an attempt to cast the captured anomaly into the void of Nothingness that exists around the Knot.

  I sense an anomaly. It burns inside me like heartburn. I step into the Knot and find myself in 1993. The Superior's presence lingers, but from here, I am on my own. I could walk away. I could turn my back on my gift, on the One who entrusts me with His universe, but instead, I close my eyes and listen for the rustle of the Nothingness breathing through a hole in time.  

  The threads of Time are knotted, or a strand breaks. Rarely are the anomalies man-made, because only Rippers can manipulate time, and Rippers are scooped up the moment they awaken to their true nature. Rumor is death awakens us, those of us who can unravel time.

  I've destroyed six anomalies recently, counting the one that took Darien. They've all been the same--something out of place in time. A cell phone in Victorian London, a piece of a twenty-ninth century spaceship in the 1990s.  True anomalies are rare, and to have so many at once is bizarre.

  Those we considered man-made, a Ripper had to have placed those objects where we found them. Time sensed those things, like a body senses a splinter or a wound, and attempted to correct the disturbance, which creats the rips and tears we repair.

  The longer I dance on the threads of time, the greater my chance of catching a glimpse of Darien. I hope so, anyway. Because he was sucked into the membrane, into the Nothingness outside the Knot. No one has ever returned from the Nothingness. Maybe only my memories of Darien are all that exists of him now. I'm scared to search for him. I'm scared I won't find him. He had a family--parents, siblings, a wife and a child, before the Containment teams brought him to our ship. Those people in the midst of their lives may never know him, or will forget him entirely. After we've contained the anomaly, I'll look for his children. If they exist, the myths are wrong. The Nothingness doesn't eliminate us entirely.

  The new anomaly is a wristwatch in Times Square, 1993. It puzzles me, since there is nothing anachronistic about a wristwatch on the ground in Times Square.  I slip it into a capsule, and together, the Superior and I pry open the smallest of holes in the fabric of time and push the capsule through. The ache in my chest fades. All is well, for now.

  I hear a voice so familiar and dear, my heart aches. Darien. He's here, somewhere. It makes sense. In 1993, he was a newlywed. He and his wife came to New York for their honeymoon. He hated it. I search the crowd for his blue-black curls and broad shoulders. "Did you hear him?" I ask the Superior.

  He is impassive, as always. It's time to go back to the ship. If we stay in one place too long, Time treats us like an inflammation and another anomaly will begin to form. We truly don't belong anywhere, anytime.

  That's why I love Darien so dearly. We belonged together,
in anytime, anyplace. We could stay anywhere and be safe from Time's ravages.  Most Rippers find a partner once they've awakened. Perhaps its one of Time's blessings. If we're to navigate the whole of existence, backwards and forwards, at least we are given a partner. Ripping alone is a quick trip into madness.

  Madness. I wonder if I will succomb. Will the Superior release me, at last? What's beyond the Knot, beyond this existence? Is there anything for us, those of us who walk like angels through all of the Superior's creation?

  I close my eyes and breathe in the exhaust-tainted air, seeking that precious voice just once more. A hand closes around my wrist. "I'm coming," I say. Even though I have Time at my fingertips, there is ever more to do. When I open my eyes, the Superior has left my side. The pressure around my wrist vanishes. I raise my hand and the entire world spins. I jump back into the ship instantly. My heart pounds so hard, so fast, I can scarcely catch my breath.

  The watch, the very one we just sent into the Nothingness, is fastened around my wrist.

  "What does it mean?" I ask the Superior. I can't look directly at him. To some, he's God. To others he's the universe. He's Karma. He's an old man to some, to other he's the embodiment of youth. He is who we need to guide us through the Knot, the author and creator of everything above and below. He shakes his head and turns my wrist over, first one way, then the other. The watch is simple. A silver band with a plain white face. Dashes instead of numbers. The minute and hour hands are frozen, as any clock's hands are when in our presence. The second hand ticks, forever ticking, but never progressing.

  Is this something even He knows nothing about? The idea of that frightens me more than anything else.

  The Superior slips back into the time stream without answering any of my questions. Darien treated the Superior like a friend, always laughing and joking. He spoke to the Superior, and the Superior would answer. To each of us, he is what we need. To me, the Superior is a father-figure, kind but distant. I can't help but think the watch made the Superior uneasy.

  The burn begins in my chest once more. I can't ponder the watch any longer. I leave it on my wrist and step into the Knot.

  2013. A box of cereal that hasn't been made since 1982 sits on a counter in an abandoned house in a tiny town in Florida. We send it into the Nothingness, and before I can step back into the Knot, I find a handful of the novelty sugary shapes in my pocket.

  Again, the Superior is speechless.

  69 B.C. A wet t-shirt  adorns a crude desert idol. When I step back into the ship, I'm mysteriously wearing it. I venture to another anomaly and send a gold ring into the Nothingness. I return to the ship, and it's on my finger.

  The Superior stops coming when I call. He doesn't have the answers.

  Or worse, he has the answers, but won't give them to me.

  The next anomaly is the one that nearly destroys me. Darien's driver's license resting on a pile of seaweed, thirty years before his birth.

  I break from the others and search through time until I find his timeline. Before I step into it, I follow the glowing thread through the Knot. During his thirtieth year, the line goes dark. He was plucked from his mortal life two days after he turned thirty. I find his presence everywhere in the Knot after that, his light changed as all of ours change, tiny glimmers of light in times he visited. Nearly all are accompanied by my own life's light. Tears run down my cheeks and drip into Time. I don't know what the effects will be, if any at all.

  Hands draw me back into the ship. The Superior takes the anomalies from me--the crushed cereal, the t-shirt, and the ring. He unfastens the watch and holds his hand out for the driver's license. I know he has to destroy them. Infection sets in, and the inflammation can destroy the Knot.

  "No," I tell him. It's tucked safely inside my shirt, next to my heart.

  I know the anomalies have to be destroyed.  Time will find them. There is no telling what it will do with so many anomalies in one place, from so many different time periods.

  Then it dawns on me.

  "They aren't from different time periods. Years, yes, but..." I take each item back from the Superior. Suddenly the significance dawns on me, as heavy and sharp as an ax. I place each thing on the table. "The watch." I flip it over and hold it up to the light. Etched into the metal place on the back are letters. C/O 1993. "Darien graduated college in 1993. The cereal was his favorite as a child. The t-shirt is from his favorite television show."

  Coincidences. Darien went into the Nothingness. No one knows what happens to his timeline, to his very existence, when one vanishes from Time. Perhaps the things in his existence impoded into the Knot. Perhaps all of this is just debris.

  "The driver's license is no coincidence." It fits on my ring finger perfectly. "I don't know what the ring means. He was married before he awakened."

  The idea of his timeline imploding might account for the ring.

  The fire burns in my breast again. I slip through Time into an empty house. The air is redolent with the smell of fresh paint and new carpet. Sunlight shines through the windows, through which I can see a beautiful backyard. Bright green grass; a huge oak tree with a swing hangs from an impossibly high branch. I want nothing more than to run out there barefoot and swing.

  What is Time, and what are we, if we can't enjoy any of it?

  I leave my shoes by the sliding glass doors and skip through the thick, lush grass. The lawn is perfectly manicured, with colorful flowerbeds around a low deck. A breeze blows my hair around my face, and I smile as I think about how much Darien loved the feel of the wind in his hair. Simple pleasures, he always said. The sun on your face, the wind in your hair, the grass under your feet.

  I sit down on the swing and push off. I pump my legs and soar higher and higher. I can travel from one end of creation to the other, but nothing feels as lovely as a simple board swing hanging from an oak tree.

  Tears flow as I wonder what sort of life Darien and I would have had if we'd been normal humans. Perhaps this could have been our home. Our time. There's a horrible moment when I lean back too far and lose my balance. The swing shifts under my weight and I lose my grip on the rope in my left hand. I hang there for a moment, too terrified to slip back into Time and land safely in the Knot or the ship.

  I hit the ground hard enough to knock the breath from my lungs. A shadow falls over my body, but I can't focus on trying to draw air into my chest and on whoever is leaning over me at the same time. I roll over, catching a glimpse of a familiar smirk and sparkling eyes. I catch the elusive breath in the next second and shove myself up, his name on my lips.

  But I'm alone in the yard.

  The burning in my chest is so great, I can't breathe around it. I dive back into the ship. The second I feel the cool bulkhead beneath my hands and knees, the burning eases.

  Alone in the Knot, I twist the ring around and around on my finger. Darien is trying to communicate with me. I know it. He's here, somewhere. I scan the Knot, seeking his presence. I watch his life--what should have been his life--and my soul shatters.

  I can't find him. Anywhere. Fear strangles me as I step into the moment of his birth. I know it by heart. The hospital room his mother should have been in is empty. I race forward to his first day of school. His seat in the classroom is occupied by a little red-haired girl. I can't find him anywhere. I scream for the Superior as I tear through the rest of Darien's established timeline, all the way to the moment he awakened. I was there, that day. The Superior put his hand in mine, and smiled down on us.

  The Superior shakes his head, mute. Tears track down his face. His gaze leaves my face and travels to the place beyond the Knot.

  The Nothingness.

  I'd taken comfort in the fact that Darien was still somewhere. Tangled in the Knot, lost in the Nothingness. Gone from me, but still somewhere. His light is gone, and I have nothing now.

  Nothing but the ring on my finger.

  I hold it up. The metal glints in the light the Superior emanates. "He didn't give me this, d
id he?"

  I leave it on my finger. It still seems like part of him, even if it is a link my mourning heart created. I slip back into the ship and curl up on my couch. Another cold comfort, a purely human comfort. We don't sleep.  We don't dream. My pillow smells of Darien.

  The burn flares to life once more. It's sharp, more fierce than anything I've experienced before. I have no will to rise, but if I don't go, I fear the fire will consume me.

  My mind slips into my own personal Nothingness. If I knew a way into the real Nothingness, I would go willingly.

  I watch Time spin by before I slip into the Knot. The wound is forming over the anomaly, raw and angry. The edges of the hole are ragged and fraying. I know I'm taking too much time, but the multi-chromatic swirl of Time is mesmerizing. I think I may be going mad. I swear I hear voices. Even more disturbing, I hear Darien. I hear my own voice.

  I'm going mad. I'm unraveling. Pieces of me spin off and dissolve into the edges of the anomaly. The inflammation increases. Power whips from the wound like lightening. I scoop up the offending object.

  The anomaly is a capsule. I pick it up, confused. Capsules are Time-proof, like our ships. Time doesn't affect them...

  I can't figure out why the capsule is even here, in the middle of a meadow somewhere on the English moors in the 1800's. I pry the lid off and shake out the contents. Around me, the wound roars and the sky roils. The fury of Time strikes fear into my heart, but I can't relinquish the capsule until I know what it is. It's a letter in an unsealed envelope. Blood pounds through my veins. It's hard to breathe. My name is scrawled across the front in a familiar handwriting. I trace the letters with a shaking finger. My hands tremble so wildly I can barely unfold the letter.

  My heart falters. My world, reborn only a moment earlier, crashes around me. The paper is blank, save for a smear of ink. I sniff it, and it smells of him.

  It's Time, trying to reorganize itself. Darien's loss wasn't a set point in time.  I push the paper back into the capsule and throw it into the blackening wound in the Knot of Time. I wait for time to reorder itself. The strands of the Knot show through the wound, with the ominous blue-black Nothingness gleaming between the loops and whorls and tangles.

  The Nothingness begins to pulse and grow. Strands disappear into the dark. I feel the Superior summoning me but I can't tear myself away from the cataclysm before me. I won't.

  A vortex opens in front of me like a gigantic eye. The sight of eternity freezes the blood in my veins and the breath in my lungs. Colors unlike anything I've ever seen fluctuate and shift, a beautiful pattern that draws me closer. The song of infinity lures me in, until my fingertips are just shy of the rip. For a second, I think I hear the Superior yelling something over the scream of Time tearing apart.

  I can't understand him, because Darien's voice silences everything--the pound of blood in my ears, the sweet song of the Nothingness, the angry roar of Time. His hand pushes through the vortex. Our fingers touch.

  And it's him. Truly, truly him. It's not madness. It's not grief. It's Darien.

  "Come with me," he whispers. His fingers lie beneath mine now, an invitation to take his hand and vanish with him into the Nothingness.

  The Superior fights for me. His strength, normally formidable, is nothing compared to Dariens' feather-light touch on my fingers.

  "Come with me," he says again. His voice is the siren song of infinity, Delilah beckoning me into temptation. I catch a glimpse of his blue eyes in the nebula. All fear leaves me and I take his hand. He pulls me through the rift, with the Superior's shouts ringing in my ears.

  Grass, thick and lush under my feet. The wind blows my hair into my face and Darien laughs. The sound fades with the breeze. Instead of the plain gray coveralls all Rippers wear, I'm in a colorful sundress. The hem brushes the tops of my knees. I'm barefoot, rubber flipflops kicked off next to me in the grass. One is right-side up, the other facedown. I smell flowers, and the scent of fresh-cut grass.

  There was something I was doing. I can't remember now, though. I'm in the backyard of the house, from the thread in the Knot where I couldn't find the anomaly. The back door of the house opens, and I walk out.

  My breath catches in my throat. My other self paces through the yard and paused near the swing. Her face turns up to the sun and she closes her eyes. I know she's loving the way the sun feels, the way the wind feels, the way the grass crunches under her feet. She's thinking of how Darien loves those things. She sits on the swing and takes off. She's going to fall in a moment, and she doesn't even know it.

  Darien's here. I feel his presence like I feel the sun on my shoulders. His hands gently squeeze my arms. He leans close, his cheek next to my temple. I touch his hands, and only feel my own skin.

  And he's gone, and the vortex reopens before me.

  New York, 1993. Times Square. I'm in the bustle of traffic. Shoulders and elbows hit me every few seconds, accompanied by the colorful curses of the natives I'm inconveniencing with my presence. I take a step, and bump into someone in front of me. Darien turns around and smiles. "Hey, watch it, lady." He pulls me close and kisses me. I see our wedding---me in a knee-length yellow dress with a blue sash, he in a suit with a matching bowtie. We had our wedding in an old barn, because his sister insisted on planning it, even though we wouldn't have cared where. His mom refused to speak to me, and his dad gave me a hug that lasted a little too long.

  Darien tugs a lock of my hair. "I was thinking we could see a musical tonight. I couldn't remember which one you wanted to see the most, though." He pulls my hair again and I swat at his hand. My hand connects with his wrist a bit harder than I meant, and the clasp of his watch pops opens.

  The sun catches the face with a flash of light as it flies off into the passing crush of humanity. Darien's face forms a surprised "O." I gasp an apology. We search for the watch, but we can't find it.

  "I'm sorry."

  He kisses my forehead and hugs me. "I hated it, anyway." Over his shoulder I see a familiar gray-clad woman. She stoops to pick something up.

  As she holds it up, the face catches the light again. I turn to look for Darien, but step right into the vortex.

  There's a box in my hands. Darien laughs and shakes his head. His mom glares at me from the living room. She actually has to crane her neck beyond the back of the couch to see down the short hallway.  She's always hated me, from the moment she laid eyes on me. We're in his childhood bedroom in his parents' beachside home. I'm still reeling from New York, but I'm also fully in Florida, in 1992, just months before our wedding. I glance down at my hand and realize there's no ring. He hasn't even proposed yet.

  Another horrible, gut-crunching thought screams in the back of my head.

  None of this happened. None of this happened. I'm not even from his time period. I wasn't born until 2054. We couldn't have met. Yet I still remember college classes with him, laughing at a goofy professor during an English class, laughing at Darien as he turned green during a pig dissection in a biology class.

  That didn't happen. Even as he sweeps my hair out of my face and plants a sloppy kiss on my lips, my mind is two places. With him through the early 90's, with him in the Knot, repairing time.

  I'm starting to get a little confused.

  Madness. I stared into the void for too long. I saw the soul of Time, and it drove me mad.

  Darien kisses me again, this time seriously, and I don't care. I'm with Darien. We're together. His hand is pressed against my bare back and he's kissing me like he'll never see me again. He pulls back and gestures toward the cereal. "Let's see if it's stale."

  I laugh. "I'm not eating cereal from 1982."

  He leads me to the kitchen and pours a bowlful. He sets the box down on the counter. "Didn't check to see if there was any milk first. Darn." He pauses, frowns, and looks at the back of the box. "Hmm. The box doesn't say there's a prize in here, but look."

  I peer into the bowl, and half-covered with the crumbly, weird-smelling bits of cereal, is a
glittering sapphire and diamond ring. Breathless, startled, I turn to Darien and find myself staring into the vortex. It sucks me in before I can blink.

  I'm in the house with that backyard. The place is lived-in, with a basket of laundry by the couch and folded stacks on the coffee table. A cartoon plays on the television, much to the amusement of a dancing toddler prancing around the living room. When I touch my face, my fingers come away wet. I'm crying. I'm exhausted, and I feel like I've been sobbing for days. Memories that are mine, but not mine, crowd into my head. Darien is missing. A police officer stands by the open front door, speaking to Darien's mother. She cries out and crumples to the floor. I run over and the police officer holds something out to me. There's a wet t-shirt in an evidence bag, the logo of his favorite show visible through the label. "This washed up on the beach," the officer says. Another officer, a detective, hands me another evidence bag. This one contains his wallet, soaked through. "We haven't found anything else," the detective says. I know he means they haven't found a body. The vortex opens behind him, and I leap through, unable to bear the pain of this incarnation.

  The water laps at the shore softly, punctuated with the croak of frogs. "This place is gorgeous," Darien says. We're in our jumpsuits. His is unbuttoned and rolled around his waist, leaving him in his white undershirt.

  I know this time. I know where we are. "I missed you," I say.

  "Huh?"

  "Nothing."

  He stoops by the shore of the lake and plucks a flower from the grass. "It got turned inside out," he says. It's my turn to have no idea what he's talking about. He frames my face with his hands and touches his forehead to mine. "It all leads back to you."

  The watch, the cereal. The backyard--I was the anomaly. That's why nothing was found. I fell into the vortex.

  In all those places, it wasn't the objects that were the anomalies. It was me. Me with Darien, in that timeline that never happened. That's why sending the capsule through hadn't closed the rift.

  Above us, another rift begins to open. Darien looks up. "You turned it inside out. You reordered time itself."

  "That's impossible." The rift gets bigger. The nebulous Nothingness begins to sing its siren song. We both look up and watch the Knot unravel. "How can I be the anomaly?"

  "It's one big circle. It's a loop. It was you. It was always you. From the beginning, it was you." He reaches up and his fingertips disappear into the rift. Static electricity spirals down his arms. His hair stands on end. "Come with me. Back to the beginning. When we lost one another."

  A wave of vertigo washes over me. I close my eyes against it, and when I open them, I'm torn between the Superior and Darien. The vortex roars around us in a screaming fury. Back to the beginning, Darien said. I find his blue eyes in the Nothingness. "I'm coming," I promise.

  I fall back into the ship.

  I twist the ring around my finger. "Darien is alive and he's out there, on the other side of the Nothingness," I tell the Superior.  You reordered Time. I couldn't fathom the theory that I'd gone beyond even the Superior's sight.

  I lay out the objects on the table. The watch. The cereal box, the t-shirt, the ring. "I knocked the watch off his hand in New York. I was with him when he put the cereal box down on the counter. A police officer gave me the t-shirt after they found it on the beach, after he'd gone missing. I don't know about the ring, but everything else is telling me a story."

  It doesn't make sense. I didn't live with him. I didn't marry him. I didn't even exist at the same time he did. I didn't live that life. I can't live that life.

  The Superior paces the ship, silent.

  “Maybe I'm crazy. Maybe I looked into the Nothingness for too long."

  My entire body is encapsulated in flame. I scream, but flames race down my throat. The pain is beyond comprehension—I want it to stop and it to top now. I realize the anomaly is right over me. The ship shudders. The wound in Time opens. The Knot glimmers through the pulsing Nothingness. Those amazing, beautiful colors flow through the widening rift, singing sweetly. This anomaly is one that could destroy all of us if it isn't contained. The Nothingness swells. The temporal winds pick up and suck anything not tied down into the rift.

  And I know what it means.

  I dive into the Knot, into the Time I lost Darien. I can change this, because it wasn't supposed to happen. I appear between them, the past-me and Darien. I've never been so close to another me before, and I can't help but stare into her eyes. "It's us," I say. "We're the anomaly." I take her hand. The universe explodes in my mind, showing me everything that was and is and could be and never would be. The colors blind me, the sounds deafen me. Time rips open overhead with the sound of mountains crumbling. Vision returns, but only the gaping eye of the Nothingness appears before me. There's only me, standing before it.

  I'm aware of Darien reaching for me. I'm her, and me, and I feel her last few moments of bewilderment and shock, and something akin to understanding. Behind me, the rift quiets to a gentle rumble. The colors pale, and I can focus on what I have to do. I kiss Darien once more. "I'm going to find you. Don't follow me."

  Before he can reply, I fall backwards into the Nothingness.

  There's Nothing, but there's Everything. I drift, awake, but dreaming. I live my life, and my other selves' lives. The ones with Darien, the ones without. The ones when I wasn't a Ripper, the lives when I was the Superior. I'm the Knot. I'm every single flicker of life. I drift, formless, for an eternity, until the Knot strangles itself, and the universe realigns it. Light eclipses the Nothingness and pulls me in. After an eternity of evanescence, the sensation of my fingers surprises me. The way the breeze ripples the tiny hairs on my arms makes me smile. It's been so long since I've felt anything.

  "Come back," Darien says. His voice tickles my ear.

  I turn around and I'm standing in his parents' kitchen. We're in our gray coveralls and his is rolled down to his waist, as usual. I go to him and kiss the dip of his collarbone. He shivers and hugs me. We pull apart, and we're in the big house with the backyard, and I'm hugely pregnant. His hands are on my belly and we're both smiling.

  "We can keep this, if you want," he says. He takes my hand and leads me to shelves and shelves of photographs in pretty frames. Him and I, together. Dozens. "These are as real as we are right now."

  "How?"

  "The Nothingness. It gives us a second chance. We reordered Time.”

  I stroke his face and tangle my fingers in his curly hair. I've missed him so much. "You don't want to go back to your life before...?"

  He grins. "You were my life before. It was you, and I didn't even realize it until the Nothingness showed me. This isn't a fantasy. This is real. This is how I knew I could find you again."

  "You did send me those things!" The edges of the room are getting fuzzy. I blink, but the blurriness doesn't clear up. The Nothingness creeps in, filling the room with color and sound. I can't feel Darien's hands on mine. In the space of a heartbeat, I'm in the Nothingness again. I spin through the unraveled knot, seeking...something. A spark of lights burns like the sun, so bright I cover my eyes. My feet touch something of substance. Dirt, sand, grass...I can't tell. Hands grip my wrist. I know that weathered, rough skin. The Superior lowers my hands, but I keep my eyes closed. I don't want to see where I am.

  "I want to go where he is," I whispered into the vastness of time and space. He speaks to me, for the first time, for the last time. His voice is wind and rain and earthquakes, all contained in a gentle whisper. The Superior tells me his terms. I can't come back. I can't ever Rip again. I can't touch Time, but I will be its slave until my last breath. He can't promise me I'll step into Darien's timeline right away. I may have to look for him. I may not find him. It may take my entire life to find him.

  I turn the ring around on my finger. "I'll find him. Whatever it takes."

  I might not find him until the end of my timeline, the Superior warns. He can send me back to the ship, back to my Ripper duties. There, Time c
an't touch me, nor can it dim the light of my memories with Darien.

  Time can't touch us, so it can't heal the wounds his loss gouged into my soul.

  "I want to go where he is."

  The Superior smiles a sad little smile. He touches the top of my head and wishes me luck and Godspeed. A gust of wind and color wash over me, sucking away my breath and dissolving me into Nothingness.

  Grass, lush and thick, curls under my toes. A breeze blows the scent of magnolia blossoms into my face. A strand of hair dances across my face. Warm, yellow sunlight shines through my eyelids. Far off, children are laughing, and something metallic squeaks. A exultant whoop and a thump, followed by cheers, encourages me to open my eyes.

  I'm in the backyard. Through a gap in the high wooden fence, I can see a group of kids playing on an old swing set. I'm in the sundress, with my flip flops on the ground beside me. One right side up, one face-down. The wind gusts again. I catch the fading scent of the Nothingness, of stars and Time. The swing hanging from the oak tree sways gently.

  The back door of the house swings open. I hold my breath, expecting my other self to pop through.

  Darien steps out, in the bright blue t-shirt and ragged blue jeans. "Hey, babe. Chicken or steak or both?" He crosses to the smoking grill and flips the lid open. Tears fill my eyes and run down my cheeks. I can see the ship, and remember how to step backwards into the Knot. Darien flops the meat down on the grill and closes the lid. "You okay?"

  His smile strikes me to my core. I can't smell the Nothingness anymore. I sniff again, and this time I can't remember whatever it is I can't smell. I sit on the swing and push myself back and forth on tiptoe. Darien joins me. He pushes me in silence. "Hey, we made it," he says out of the blue.

  "What?" It meant something--it means something--but for the life of me, I can't remember what.

  "I don't know now. It seemed important for a second." He surprises me by spinning the swing. The world zips around me, half-hidden by the hair in my face. I catch glimpses of his twinkling eyes, his wide smile. The wild rotation of the swing slows, reverses, and for a moment, I wonder if this is what it feels like to go back in time.

  ~ * ~

  Keep reading for the first three chapters of A. D. Roland’s novels!

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